A Big Day for the world
A map representing the endemic
species of India for Global Big Day
How many birds can be seen in a single day around the world? That's the idea behind the Global Big Day effort being co-ordinated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, USA. For more than 30 years, Cornell's Team Sapsucker has been doing Big Days (24-hour bird races) to raise money for conservation and support its eBird data logging system, equivalent to the British Trust for Ornithology's BirdTrack scheme.
Previous years have seen 294 species recorded in Texas, and the 'El Gigante' which combined Arizona and California for 275 species. In addition to these North American bird races, Cornell's team also had a great time at the Champions of the Flyway event in Israel in 2014.
To celebrate Cornell Lab's centennial in 2015, it has decided to make some changes to the Big Day — most importantly to expand the team worldwide. It is inviting everyone around the world to try to see as many species as possible on a single calendar day. Are 3,000 species possible? 4,000? More? Could participants document half the species in the world? No-one knows, but that's what will make it fun. For birds to count, all you need to do is enter them into eBird. Mark your calendars for Saturday 9 May 2015 for the first ever Global Big Day, which also happens to be on International Migratory Bird Day.
This year is also a little different from past Big Days because Cornell is interested in the cumulative total from around the world. This means that if you are in, say, Brazil there are 253 species that can't be found anywhere else. India has 57, Australia 347, Puerto Rico 16, Hawaii 33 and California just two. Maybe someone will log Scottish Crossbill in Britain ...
The hope is that miniature competitions will develop. Which county will record more species, Norfolk or Suffolk? Scotland or Wales? Devon or Dorset? The main differences between this and other bird races is that it is interested in the number of species that can be seen by working together — after all, that is the idea behind eBird.
More than 50 countries across the world are already taking part in the global big day — check out the full list here. Some countries have truly impressive totals, with Peru fielding over 90 teams covering their biodiverse country from end to end. The Indian team has called its local effort the Endemic Bird Day, inspiring an artist to create the artwork of Golden-collared Manakin (below), a Neotropical species.
Cornell will be using the hashtag #GlobalBigDay on social media and hope that participants will use it in discussions. To find out more head over to http://ebird.org/globalbigday/.
Cornell says that it realises that people may use other bird recording systems such as Birdtrack, but it hopes that on this one day birders worldwide can bring their data together for a truly global snapshot. It continues to work with BTO and other groups around the world on how to fund and develop an integrated global system.
If you are new to eBird, take a look at the Quick Start Guide to get started.
